The Senate hearing featuring Anthony Fauci, MD, was frustrating and painful in its futility and pointlessness. Senators filled the proceedings with familiar arguments about decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several claims were demonstrably false, and there was a heavy reliance on revisionist history: blaming public health officials, for example, for closing schools to reduce virus transmission without noting that they were reacting to more than 1,500 children dying from COVID infection—most of them in 2021 and 2022.
When the hearing ended, one vital question remained not only unanswered but largely absent from the discussion: How will the United States be better prepared for the next pandemic?
That’s where Congress and the Trump administration should be laser focused.
Letting a rare opportunity slip away
In The Big One, my coauthor Mark Olshaker and I warned that another pandemic is inevitable—not if, but when. And as bad as COVID was, with 7 million dead worldwide and more than a million in the United States, the next one could be much worse. I argued that our greatest vulnerability would not simply be a dangerous virus but our tendency to move from one crisis to the next without making the improvements and sustained investments needed to prepare for the future.
COVID-19 exposed strengths and weaknesses across every part of our response: surveillance, laboratory capacity, communications, supply chains, vaccine development, emergency authorities, federal-state coordination, and global cooperation. Some efforts exceeded expectations. Others fell painfully short.
As bad as COVID was, with 7 million dead worldwide and more than a million in the United States, the next one could be much worse.
The United States had a rare opportunity after the pandemic to step back and conduct a comprehensive, bipartisan assessment of what happened—not to assign blame but to identify the lessons that could save lives during the next public health emergency.
Instead, day by day, our elected leaders are letting it slip away.
A body modeled after the 9/11 Commission could examine difficult questions without assuming the answers in advance. Why were some decisions successful while others failed? How should emergency authorities be exercised? What investments produced the greatest return? Where did public communication break down? How can we strengthen trust before the next crisis arrives?
Getting those answers right could save lives—tens of thousands or even millions.
Can’t build preparedness amid crisis
Some issues, such as the origin of SARS-CoV-2, will not be resolved conclusively. After years of investigation, definitive evidence remains elusive, and the likelihood of obtaining it diminishes with time. That uncertainty should not prevent us from addressing the many lessons we have at our fingertips to prepare for a pandemic caused by a virus spillover from the animal kingdom or an intentional or unintentional release from a laboratory.
Disruptions to federal research funding risk leaving us less prepared than we were just a few years ago.
We know that early detection and resilient supply chains matter. We know that nonpharmaceutical interventions such as high-quality masking can reduce virus transmission when the community accepts and uses them. We know that clear, consistent communication is vital, especially when the science is evolving.
We also know that preparedness cannot be built during an emergency. It requires sustained investment of time, focus and resources before the crisis begins.
To its credit, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention undertook a candid review of its pandemic performance: it invited outside experts to evaluate its operations, publicly acknowledged significant shortcomings, and implemented broad reforms designed to improve emergency response, communications, laboratory operations, and accountability. That spirit of honest self-assessment should have become the model—not the exception—for the nation’s pandemic review.
Unfortunately, we are moving in the opposite direction: The United States has withdrawn from international partnerships that are critical for detecting emerging threats; Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attacks and an exodus of capable leaders have hollowed public health agencies; and disruptions to federal research funding risk leaving us less prepared than we were just a few years ago.
How history will measure us
Viruses do not care about politics. They do not distinguish between Republicans and Democrats, urban and rural communities, or red and blue states. The next pandemic will arrive whether we are ready or not.
History will not judge us by how effectively we relitigated the COVID-19 outbreak or carried out personal political vendettas. It will judge us by whether we learned enough from it to protect the next generation.
We will one day measure our success or failure to seize this opportunity in lives saved or lost.
Congress should establish an independent national pandemic preparedness commission with a bipartisan mandate and a fixed deadline to develop concrete proposals. The administration should support the effort.
The question before us is not whether mistakes were made. Every nation made them. The question is whether we have the courage to examine them honestly, preserve what worked, fix what didn’t, and prepare for what comes next.
That is the conversation the United States should be having. Wednesday’s hearing should infuriate and alarm every single one of us.
Every day we postpone or ignore an honest accounting of our country’s COVID performance is another day we lose preparing for the next big one.
We will one day measure our success or failure to seize this opportunity in lives saved or lost.
Dr. Osterholm is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.